Is French Fries American or French?!

Is French Fries American or French?

French fried potatoes, commonly known as French fries or just fries (North America) or chips (United Kingdom, Ireland and most Commonwealth nations), are pieces of potato that have been cut into batons and deep-fried. Colloquial names are "hot chips" (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) and "slap chips" (South Africa, "slap" IPA [slup] is Afrikaans for "limp").
In areas where "chips" is the common term, "French fries" usually refers to the thinner variant found in US-influenced fast food restaurants, or to the even thinner "shoestring potatoes". In North America "chips" generally means potato chips (called "crisps" in the UK and Ireland), which are deep-fried very thin slices of potato that are often served cold. A more recent hybrid of thicker cross-cut slicings and generally eaten hot, is called waffle-cut potatoes (not to be confounded with potato waffles made from reconstituted potato). In Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and some areas of the United Kingdom, "chips" can mean either crisps, or French fried potatoes.
History
French-fried potatoes were likely invented during the 18th century in the area that later became Belgium, and the name "French" was applied to them in (American) English at the beginning of the 19th century. However, there are various more-or-less plausible alternative theories.
Culinary origin of the term
The straightforward explanation of the term is that it means potatoes fried in the French sense of the verb: "to fry" can mean either sautéing or deep-fat frying, while its French origin, frire, unambiguously means deep-frying : frites being its past participle used with a plural feminine substantive, as in pommes de terre frites ("deep-fried potatoes").